Factorio, highly addictive game(alpha)

[stessier]

Here are my current upgrade levels.


And Paingod, you mentioned big nests - just know that the game kind of self limits your expansion by throwing stuff like this at you if you go out far enough. It can be done with just the tank, but it takes a long time.

[Paingod]

You have got some zippy drones!

The biggest nests around my base are maybe 2/5 the size of that big one you show. That is immense!

Added to my lines:

• Sulfuric Acid & Batteries
• Temporary Iron Plate drop to keep my substation churning out belts, balancers, and tunnels.

I'm wildly short of high-speed belts now as everything I'm building is substantially larger than what I had before and takes up far more physical space. I think my next waystation will be a Logistics Hub that just churns out mass quantities of train tracks, inserters of all types, belts, switches, and tunnels. These are the things I need the most right now, and I need to be able to just walk up to the bar and have drones stuff my pockets full of them.

I rigged up my Nuclear reactor to use the "Steam low triggers Inserter cell eject, triggers Inserter cell insert" logic and it worked on the first pass, but I haven't been watching it closely since. Every time I go by my reactors, the steam is nearly 100% full and a fuel rod is burning down, but there's not a fresh one waiting to be used up... so I think it's working, but can't be absolutely certain unless I catch it at a low steam point.

The biters are raising hell with my walls, too. As much as I want to build up internally, I'm afraid that by the time I'm done I'll have near-constant assaults on every side. I think I'm going to suffer the abuse from Biters for a while and push to Artillery and then have an Artillery Train that I use to extend my walls out while resupplying my defenses. Hell, it'd be comical to have an Artillery Train that I'm in command of running on a track with walls and turrets being built up around me as I move forward. I think I'd be mentally playing the Imperial March as I rolled forward.

[stessier]

Sounds like you are making a bunch of progress!! Which color belts are you using at this point? I used Red for a long, long time under the "good enough" umbrella. Blue is definitely an improvement, but I didn't want to let perfection get in the way of progress.

[Paingod]

I've fully transitioned to Blue and don't use anything else. Not out of dedication to speed, but so I don't have to try and remember where I used other things and upgrade them later. It's no great pain to set up the lubricant needed along with a few extra gear factories.

[Paingod]

The night's work, red chip manufacturing that broke 25k/hour. Has its own dedicated green chip production:


My base map so far:


I'm going to need more Copper mines and a bigger (or second) smelter when I get into Blue chips and Lightweight materials, as well as expanded plastics. I went big or go home on Red chips in order to try and ensure an abundance for the brief future; they're used for a lot of useful things, like Roboports and splitters. That 4-car train is already filled with 8k per car and the chests are half full. The part I really love is that if I need more Red chips, I can either expand it south some more, or copy the whole thing and stamp a second one somewhere else to double it.

I'm working under the assumption that while 4 carloads of red chips seems like overkill right now, if I manage to empty it it's because I needed to, and that's okay.

I think the red chip fab was the last thing needed before getting into a logistics hub that supplies me personally with railroads, concrete, inserters, belts, power lines, walls, turrets, etc for expansion building. I need to get that running before I try and get science working again. Right now that's the priority over science packs. Running around like a ninny and hand-crafting half of what I need has gotten old and my temporary hub for producing these things is running dry of old resources. Except plastic. Holy crap do I have a lot of old stored plastic. I'm going to need to re-route my "plastics to red chip train" to a special stop just to collect it all unless I want to make 6 trips to drop it all off by hand.

Sidenote: I discovered the issue with my Reactor controls and they're working fine now. Everything online was saying that an attachment to a storage tank read everything in the system - all 275k of the potential Steam I was storing. As such, I had the inserters set to trigger when the Steam dropped below 50k. Turns out it was reading just that one tank, which never exceeded 25k so it never stopped running. I adjusted it to 10k and it's perfect.

So optimal Reactor control is achieved by having a good number of Steam storage tanks to create a solid buffer of Steam, then connecting a line from one tank to a single Extractor inserter pulling spent fuel cells only when the Steam reaches below 10k. That Extractor inserter sends a signal along a different color line saying it's holding a Cell and the Inserters down the line read this as their trigger to grab a fresh cell and stuff it in. So easy it hurts that I didn't see it as a solution. No combinators and layers of logic with gates. Just a couple "If > Then" switches.

Now that I know the fix to controlling Reactor fuel usage, I can create a Reactor mega-plex that can power my factories into the far-flung future with no worries at all - except maybe eventually running out of fuel cells in 100 years.

I am completely enamored with the concept of running an Artillery train out, using Construction drones to build up Roboports, a thick layer of turrets and walls, and more tracks to conquer the surrounding countryside, too. I'm going to try that instead of using my Tank. I just need the research.

[stessier]

Your plans sound like fun and it's nice to finally get to see your factory!

With regards to your science - I've found even putting up a minimal, not at all efficient science center is worth it. Sure it may take 10x longer to research a topic when compared to a "good" setup, but if you're out expanding your borders for a couple hours, you can come back to a couple completed science projects rather than nothing at all.

[Paingod]

With regards to your science - I've found even putting up a minimal, not at all efficient science center is worth it.

I'd do that if I had any Science in storage that would work for what's next. Everything I have left will take Yellow science, of which I have Zero, and it's an involved one to get going in any kind of useful quantity. As such, I haven't made any Science in days of play. Producing Science is my next objective after getting a Logistics center up and running, though. A station for each type. I should be able to knock Red out in a few seconds... ... actually, maybe I should start with a Yellow line and work backwards. I think I have thousands of everything else in storage, even Purple. Those will be my goals. Logistics > Yellow > Purple > Blue > Military > Green > Red. The Yellow line is going to be a monster. I need to build a line for Low Density Materials in massive quantities (dozens of factories dedicated to it), a line for Blue chips (next on the docket after Logistics before this), and a line for Flight Frames (I already have Steel, Batteries, Green Chips for this and need to set up Electric Engines). So three more lines to get Yellow going.

Using the calculator, even if I do 2x Production Mods and Speed everywhere else with Beacons on Smelting to speed them up, to get just 200 Yellow per minute I need to have a total resource consumption of 3250 Iron ore, 4850 Copper ore, and 10300 Oil per minute. I'ma need more factories! I suppose 200 per minute is a lofty starting goal and I should probably scale back to maybe 20-50 per minute and leave room to duplicate/expand.

I think I've also identified a need to make loopback crossroads and install another one in the middle of my eastern rail line. I've been using one-off loops to send trains back quicker, but they're ugly.

[LordMortis]

Thought I was out of the pollution, more power for laser, more pollution, more power for lasers spiral for a while. I was wrong. All I did was increase my production by one iron plate line and one copper plate like to expand gears and green circuits...

It may be time to figure out how to go nuclear. Also, I need to jack up my accumulators now. They didn't really seem to do anything... right up until I started walking a tight rope on night power and getting attacked and then they went from not doing anything to not doing enough like that.

So solar, coal, accumulator expansion will happen tonight, so I expand the walls and lasers over the weekend, so I can figure out if I'm learning to go nuclear, expanding my refining, or continuing on building what I hope is the my first permanent foundry/smelting.

[Paingod]

One of the things I love is that even after 100 hours, there's still a learning curve!

[LordMortis]

Evolution happened and my single row of lasers is too weak, as it seems to be after I start making it a double row of lasers. And expanding to outstrip pollution spread is no hold to build 1000's more lasers, which naturally will drive my power needs through the roof. So it's past time to learn nuclear power, I guess... Or not... I suspect the problem isn't volume and power of the lasers but rather the range of the enormous spitters, though I never see the attacks only the alerts.

While I wait for lasers phasers bobasers, I've been working on my hopefully permanent bus lines and feeding them in to my temp set up. I'm now working on plastics, which means I've hit trying to figure out permanent oil refining and where to put it. I've conceded defeat and am going to try to emulate Nilaus build, I think, and then learn from how it was done later.

First rocket launched but I haven't finished my yellow based science yet, so I'm going to let that play out and then probably just do laser white science to try and better fend off the insect hoards. Spider is slowly being researched.

Still need to re-learn and implement logistics robot networks... And trains...


So a lot of relaxing hours and low efficiency playing is this...

My original, everything on a single bus



My bus in progress



My territory



My base




It's taken considerably more time to do this than it took butterknife to build out a crazy organized high output base just to try on spiders (which I'm still not at) My save says I'm at around 100 hours already.

[stessier]

Radars along your walls will let you watch the attacks in real time so you can understand what's happening.

Your northeast walls are... um... Unique?

[LordMortis]

Radars along your walls will let you watch the attacks in real time so you can understand what's happening.

Your northeast walls are... um... Unique?

I was in the middle of expanding when I started to experience power problems. As I finished fixing power problems, evolution reduced the effectiveness of my defenses so I had to start producing more lasers. I still haven't reinforced all my walls yet and I probably need another 2,000 lasers to do so. So it remains on hold and I'm planning and building out infrastructure while the slowly produce.

[Paingod]

Fun moment of the night:

Action: Sending my logistics and construction train ahead to a station near where I was about to build. Result: Arriving to find that everything in the train had been unpacked by the station and distributed it across multiple lanes and product lines. It took some time to gather up all of my train's contents. New plan: Build a special station and use that instead of an existing one.

[Paingod]

The night's work - getting a 12 reactor setup going. It's quite smooth, and supplies enough for a little expansion.

[The Meal]

I've thought about it, but I'm going to start a new map for the 1.1 release. I'd have been sharing my current map (roughly 100 satellites launched), but early on I did a squirrely half-ass city block base coverage and everything ended up looking like garbage. Hopefully I get off to a cleaner start this time.

I'll probably use the same settings (Rail World, but turning on full encroachment for the biters), as that really hit all the parts I find to be fun. Not looking forward to the first two hours, but things get a lot more fun after I'm past the "trying to stay alive" hump.

[LordMortis]

In two hours, I'd still just be starting the game. All y'all would already be churning away blue science. I doubt I would ever play the same game as the rest of you, but at the same time, I find it very relaxing to just work slowly and let the game speed itself up, as it does. Kind of ironic for a game about efficiency, no?

[The Meal]

I like the stress-free periods of the game, and agree that its most fun when you just take things on at your own pace.

But I also like the aspect of building up defenses at walls and keeping the biters from encroaching (artillery is just so much fun), so I need to keep enemy expansion on to enjoy that side of things. The first two-hours is just make-or-break to withstand those first assaults before you can start walling yourself in.

[stessier]

Would anyone be interested in trying a multiplayer game over the next few days? I'm off work until Monday, so could play most times until Saturday and then only before 5pm eastern on Sunday.

Might be interesting to see how fast we can get a ticket launched.

[LordMortis]

I'm not sure what my settings are. The bugs to attack my wall and do expand but they aren't super aggressive about it.

I think if I put myself under the pressure of doing things quickly, the game would go from relaxing to feeling like I'm still at work and I don't think I would have returned to it.

It's like this the game my job should be. Sure things come up and change my focus but then I just focus on the new thing until I can reasonably get back to the old thing and if all of the plate should crash, that's OK, I just start em up one at time until they are spinning again.

The bugs are part of that relaxing enjoyment but I assume I have them scaled down from the game ally'all play.

[The Meal]

Would anyone be interested in trying a multiplayer game over the next few days? I'm off work until Monday, so could play most times until Saturday and then only before 5pm eastern on Sunday.

Might be interesting to see how fast we can get a ticket launched.

I've wondered what multiplayer would be like for Factorio. I think it'd be very dependent on how folks mesh. I'd expect that OOers would have a good time playing together.

But, as with most things multiplayer, I can't commit because I value flexibility in my schedule. I'd definitely want to hear all about it though!

LordMortis, I do crank up the bugs more so than standard settings, but I don't think you should paint stessier or Paingod with that same brush (I play Rail World, but with enemy expansion turned on — there are a bunch of other presets). But I explained why in my previous post. I'm not doing it for the excitement or because I think additional time pressure is fun (I very much and very explicitly don't). I just like the pseudo tower-defense side of things on top of all the optimization stuff.

[coopasonic]

I have played multi with my older spawn and it was fun. We mostly cooperated by splitting up duties. I did all the engineering and he wandering killing bugs and discovering resources, later working on building up defenses and setting up mining outposts leaving me to the more logistical base building aspects.

[Butterknife]

It's taken considerably more time to do this than it took butterknife to build out a crazy organized high output base just to try on spiders (which I'm still not at) My save says I'm at around 100 hours already.

So I just saw this, and I wanted to point out that the base I showed you guys is literally the 30th one I've made.

Plus, steam has me clocked at 1360 hours, so unless you've been playing a ridiculously long time don't feel bad about your "early" bases.

[LordMortis]

I don't feel bad. At worst I feel jealous at the ability to put a plan together in your head and achieve it more efficiently. But I don't even really feel that, I'm just enjoying the game differently and I appreciate that and I appreciate at the time I can appreciate the pace at which y'all move along while I putz around in my own way.

[stessier]

I finally paused extending my newest expansion. Here are the current limits of the base. I've hit the maximum distance the map will let me scroll out.



Now I'm working on expanding science production. I redid Blue and Black to my current thoughts on best practices and, when a rocket launches, I can hit 1k consumed per minute.



My next task is to launch rockets faster. I increased my refinery speeds, so I'm currently good on rocket fuel, but lacking on Lightweight Structures. So I'll probably upgrade that then upgrade the rocket fuel (I think by starting to use Coal Liquification).

[LordMortis]

I'm beginning to hate my map. Too much water and I don't think I'm going to find landfilling all that relaxing. Maybe in a future iteration. I never got to building a network, nuke power, or trains. I feel like I should press on to these and then restart but pressing of feels like work and so, it's time to hit the reset. I think I'ma cut back on forests and water. I like the barriers they provide to the instect hoards and pollution and using those things strategically but I also find it monotonous to to deal with them in game when I'm still (re)learning the concepts of the game, which I enjoy. I don't even mind ripping down and rebuilding my infrastructure but dealing with lakes either creatively or by massive landfill is just too much.

Oddly, enough, as slow as I took the last game, I think I'm going to take this next one even slower, knowing how pollution spread will go quicker with lower forests and power/pollution needs will go up without lake barriers to act as wall stand ins. I think I'm also going to try and preplan some longer term needs at the start.

I'm also wondering if I should start thinking about mods or if I should wait until 1.1 before such thoughts.

I'm also debating watching more Nialus(?) videos before continuing. He helps me get dynamics and begs me to expand my interpretation of how things tetris together that just even enter my process. It never occurred to me to run undergrounds through my factories ( ) until looking at his work. As mentioned upthread, the one thing I don't care for is that everything is done by "Download my template" and that doesn't help me understand, So I find myself just pausing his videos and looking at what he did... Except for his refining. There, I just paused his video and literally copied his set up.

I think I might try to bus north/south instead of east/west this time as well. East/west side scrolling is my natural way of seeing the world and I think I want to take myself out of my comfort zone to see if it helps me see other things I'm missing.... That's really going to mess with the harumph of refining well. Though I think I'm just going to work on the ratios, suggested. 5 refineries. 2 grease, 2 heavy slitting, 8 medium splitting. Having those ratios, I think, are what I need most.


Anyhoo, relearning the game, chapter to commence soon...



Also, what is the key to de-select?????

[stessier]

Q selects whatever your mouse is on. It will also clear whatever you are holding.

Check out KatherineOfSky. She doesn't use templates in most of her vids and explains things at each step.

[The Meal]

Nilaus is basically a plop-down-a-blueprint sort of guy. That's not what inspires me. KoS is a great suggestion. I really like kitch as well, but he's much smaller channel (and currently not uploading new vids because of a family situation).

stessier, I'm thinking about my new map (holding out for a bit for some of my favorite mods to be converted to 1.1), and was wondering what you thought of your frequent, small lakes. I don't think I've played with a map like that. I suppose it'd be nice for compartmentalizing walling off small sections at a time, but I worry about their effect on me trying to keep things straightened out. One of the reasons I'm abandoning my last map is because my rail lines look like something a drunk toddler scrawled with a crayon. I'd like a bit more order this time around.

[LordMortis]

Q!!!! Thank you!!!! Thank you!!!!


If I come back long enough I think I'd like to do the many small lakes but not right now. I need to be comfortable with the order aspect of the game before learning how to adapt to not having order.


I know y'all discussed this a long time ago but what mods do your recommend nowadays. I'm content with vanilla but I don't know what I don't know.


I haven't delved deep in to let's plays, Nailus only helps me because I look at some of the stuff he's done and and just seeing his structures sometimes give me "a ha" moments. He tetrises layouts so very well and invites me to see things more three dimensionally than I am generally able to do without assistance. His explanations don't register with me and his pace is too fast "plopping down". If I were to look for someone to inspire me, I'd want the Scott Manly of Factorio, where someone just explains good sense in ways the relate to reality, where I end up learning real world concepts to better enjoy a video game. I think I watched over 80 hours of Manly playing Kerbal SP and never even approached the realm of the game I was watching him play... And I could probably sit and watch it again... I've forgotten so much of what were essentially astrophysics classes for dummies.

Nailus seemingly tries to be that passionate knowledgeable educator but he does it with mods and I'm too slow to pick up what he's laying down. <click>drop down a blue print<click>mode emulates some super efficient set up to work with said blue print<click>Mod shows how efficient it is and then talk about something wholly unrelated or seemingly unrelated to me. Manly also tells stories and I like stories ...

KoS historically has been good for helping me grasp aspects of a game I don't get at all but not in better grasping things I get but would like get better. That is juxtaposed to someone like Quill who I'd watch to see game aspects broadly shown to see if I might like a game before I buy it or someonle like a Kruggsmash who will teach nothing about a game at all but who has a relaxing (from my end, a lot work from his end) role play.

[The Meal]

Here's my mod list:

That was the last list I posted. I'm in an in-between space right now because I'm going to be constrained by what's available for 1.1, but I tend to focus on quality of life stuff more so than game overhauls (though I've done a Bob's series and a Spaceblock play through).

From that list above I'd strike out Ammo Loader+ (too cheaty, too finickey), Bottleneck (basically incorporated into the game), DyWorld (that was not a fun mod for me), Long Reach (I can live without it), Nanobots: Early Bots (because I'm masochistic), and Optera's Library (got replaced with a different precursor mod which I forget the name of).

Here's what I'm currently thinking about running (checked boxes only):

Afraid Of The Dark ► The default night texture annoys me
Auto Deconstruct ► Really helpful in a Rail World situation where you automate your mining areas
Disco Science ► Purely aesthetic
Factory Planner ► Not sure I'd end up using this, but seems interesting from its webpage
FNEI ► Super duper helpful
GhostPlacerExpress ► I won't wait for this to become available, but it can be helpful in early stages
Improved Research Queue ► Looks interesting, but I haven't played with it yet; lets you rearranged your queued up techs
Informatron ► Not sure if any of these mods take advantage of this being installed
Radar Signals ► I haven't played with this yet, but looks interesting
Resource Spawner Overhaul ► Not sure I'll notice the differences this makes to the world spawn, but I'll give it a try this time around ◄ Actually, this doesn't seem all that beneficial for my playstyle. Removed.
Tapeline ► Will be new to me this time around
Todo List ► You can mimic this behavior by using zoomed-out maps and putting down your own text, but I really really like what this mod does for leaving notes for myself when logging out. I won't start my 1.1 playthrough without this.
Tree Collision ► I was thinking of using this instead of Squeak Through, but I'm sort of going back the other way at the moment (preferring Squeak Through to Tree Collision, which I haven't ever used before)

Just one player's thoughts. Certainly not trying to tell you how you should mod your game.

[The Meal]

So I went ahead and started my new 1.1 (1.1.2, initially) game, despite some of my "must have" mods not being available.

I went with default generation Rail world settings, but I tweaked the stone setting for maximum density (as I expect there to be some landfill in my future) and I played with water generation to give me the map below. I set enemy expansion on (as I explained earlier), and made sure I had research queue set to always.



Starting area is just above "A" with all four ores available in close proximity. I expect to make that initial bulb my starting power area. Below that is a lengthy straight section which will become my bus (smelting on the left side near the big coal deposit; mall features in the wider section to the right).

The chokehold at "A" is about 4 tiles wide, which means I'll certainly have to landfill my starter ores from there over to the smelting arrays. I've played a bit of the map (through red science), so it was nice to plunk down a couple of turrets at this tiny chokehold and know that I wouldn't be bothered. I then creeped to chokehold "C" and took out the one-pixel biter base (actually a worm) just to its right, then walled/and/turreted across the "C" designation. I also took out the biter base at "B" and plunked down a longer wall there. My initial build has me move out of the burner miners ASAP and into the electric miners so that initial pollution isn't too significant. Fortunately I was able to "take it to" the first few bases before they came and checked out what I had going on on my starter peninsula. It was a pretty chill start, honestly. I'll need to wall off above and below my "smelter coal" patch to the left of "B", but the tense starting stuff should be pretty minimal.

Oil is pretty close by (just to the left of my starter peninsula) and iron and copper expansions are pretty straightforward (the iron expansion is more convenient for my smelter area than my initial iron). The initial uranium is a ways away (NE of the starter area), but I expect to be pretty liberal with the landfill (I downloaded a mod to make landfill look like natural terrain rather than ugly mud in the vanilla game).

Should be a bit different than any of my previous games. I'm looking forward to it!

[stessier]

Nilaus is basically a plop-down-a-blueprint sort of guy. That's not what inspires me. KoS is a great suggestion. I really like kitch as well, but he's much smaller channel (and currently not uploading new vids because of a family situation).

stessier, I'm thinking about my new map (holding out for a bit for some of my favorite mods to be converted to 1.1), and was wondering what you thought of your frequent, small lakes. I don't think I've played with a map like that. I suppose it'd be nice for compartmentalizing walling off small sections at a time, but I worry about their effect on me trying to keep things straightened out. One of the reasons I'm abandoning my last map is because my rail lines look like something a drunk toddler scrawled with a crayon. I'd like a bit more order this time around.

Sorry, just saw this. I like the small lakes because I like expanding and the lakes help cut down on the amount of walls and lasers I need. I don't feel mine were very frequent, though - the world I see you just started looks really hard because it takes so long to get landfill at any scale. Good luck!

I know y'all discussed this a long time ago but what mods do your recommend nowadays. I'm content with vanilla but I don't know what I don't know.

I don't use any mods. I like vanilla. I have tried DyWorld and liked the idea, but thought the implementation was too brutal. The two from Meal's list that I really think should just be part of the game are ToDo List and FNEI. Don't ask why I just don't install them.

[stessier]

My factory with pollution.


A close up of my refinery/smelting areas - a lot of trains moving around!


My biggest problem now is that the water pumps seem to be having issues. I install one and it's only pumping out at 25%. I install another one and it's at 100%. I go away and come back and it's switched, or they are both at 25%. It's only happening at my Solid Fuel production center (thankfully), but it's ruining that part of the factory. Given that is my current bottleneck, I'm kinda stuck.

Not sure what I'm going to do. I hit my 1000 rockets launched milestone, which is kinda neat. Maybe I shelve this and wait for 1.1 to come out. Decisions, decisions.

[Paingod]

I've wondered what multiplayer would be like for Factorio.

I tried it out with my eldest, 12. We have very different ideas of what's efficient and what needs to be prioritized. While I wanted to play a game with him, it wasn't this one. Anytime he came behind me and "fixed" something I put together, I'd get an eye twitch.

A close up of my refinery/smelting areas - a lot of trains moving around!

That is really impressive. I personally really love watching my trains haul things around. I'm still running 1x4 trains, though. I might for some time. Everything has been built around them. It'd be a pain to change everything, but not impossible.

I spent the vacation tinkering in my map quite a bit. I still don't have Yellow science up and running yet, but I've got committed factories to every other kind (except White, which I haven't unlocked yet). I'm very close to Yellow. I've got the production lines to support it half built. I need more Steel and Copper in a bad way.

I'm currently running 6 Iron mines and 5 Copper mines. Copper and Iron have "mega" smelters I redesigned to churn out plates as fast as ore is dumped in. Steel has been trickier and is the last big bottleneck I have. I need to get a couple more Iron mines up and dedicated just to Steel. Then I should have enough to actually start fair production of Red through Yellow science.

My Logistics Train has been a HUGE boon. When I redesigned my first smelter, I blueprinted it along with enough Roboports to cover the entire ground space it occupies. When it came time to build the Copper and Steel smelters, I stamped them out and just had my train run back and forth, dumping it's contents into Storage chests within range of the Roboports. Drones put everything together for me, and when the drones stopped building, I'd load everything back into the train by reversing the Stack Inserters... then send it back to restock and come back to reload the storage chests. I had to repeat the cycle maybe 6 times, but everything was built entirely hands-off. This Train makes all the runs back and forth to my Logistics factory while I'm building mines and expanding. I stay put and it fetches a resupply of everything. It can build landfill, rail systems, defenses, solar panel arrays, reactors, mines, and factories - and lugs around Modules/Tools/Drones/Fuel. I enjoy just going for rides between build sites, too. It's my favorite little thing. I think that if I had one wish for trains, it would be to be able to build "Logistics" cars that drones pull from directly.

My 12-Reactor setup, during the entire time I've been rebuilding everything, has chewed through about 1,000 fuel cells. The Reactor only uses what it needs. It's needed a lot.

I expect that once I stop just building and start Sciencing, my factory will buckle under its own weight and I won't have enough of anything. I probably realistically need at least a dozen more Iron and Copper mines just to keep up with the demand in everything I've built.

I really look forward to the 1.1 update if they're going to include basic Train logistics through simply controlling how many trains can target a single station at once.

[LordMortis]

With the restart I was amazed at how quick I got yellow science up and running. I had tried to anticipate growing in to a "city block" model but now that I am quickly approaching the plan for logistic bot network, I find my blocks are completely in consistent with the logistics ports ranges. Trying to figure out if I'll want to slowly tweak my "carefully" designed inputs and out puts or just move to another area and let things run.

Also, I tried ignoring solar. That was a mistake. I lost about two hours of gameplay to go back to my start session save when I had a coal drop cycle of death and no way to recover. I went back in time and then started building out solar before the cycle could repeat. In future plays, my lesson learned is to keep two power grids. One for coal, one for everything else, so should I get in the death spiral that I can't see until it's too late, I can cut power to everything but the coal miners to and then kickstart my power with manual feeds.

Makes me want to start again with lessons learned again but if I keep doing that again and again, I'll never get to my ultra mega Stess base of considerable size, much less the three hurdles of learning (or two of relearning, and one new learning), networks, trains, nuclear power.

[The Meal]

Should be a bit different than any of my previous games. I'm looking forward to it!

the world I see you just started looks really hard because it takes so long to get landfill at any scale. Good luck!

Yep, that aspect will be a challenge. Here's what I've got set up on my starter stone patch (Landfill was my first researched green tech).



And here's The Neck ("A" in my initial map):


Finally, here's everything walled up (no landfill placed, yet):

[LordMortis]

I love how you lay paths for future quick movement. Noted because.... I don't. Or didn't....

[Paingod]

I love how you lay paths for future quick movement. Noted because.... I don't. Or didn't....

I've personally got a crossroads "highway" in my base that I use to navigate up/down/left/right quickly, but haven't run concrete to each area I visit outside of that. I'm wary of laying down too much concrete and landfill as (IIRC) it blocks the absorption of pollution by the ground/water tiles. I try and leave as much bare earth and trees around as I can. I don't even clear-cut areas prior to stamping down a blueprint.

Last night I finally chugged my way into Yellow science. It's not that I wasn't already there, but rather that I hadn't been making any in my redesign. I clicked the last pieces into place and it sprung to life.

I'm waiting to see which parts of my supply chain buckle now that I have all the sciences except White humming along. My research base fired up with 64k Red/Green/Military/Blue, 10k Purple, and 2k Yellow. I was able to immediately research Artillery, Rocket Controls, Laser Damage 5, and am now 50% through Spiderbot researching.

Biters have really been hammering my walls on all sides due to pollution spillage, so my next agenda item is the train of doom and expansion. I've already tacked two Artillery cars onto my Logistics train and will try to build out a rolling platform of death later tonight. My plan, until it meets the enemy is:

• Logistics train pulls up to a wall, I lay down the Storage array that unpacks the train. Walls, turrets, poles, Robotports, railways - all carried to the front lines in box cars.
• I stamp out a defensive array around the railway and Construction drones make it happen.
• With defenses hardened, I load up the ammo and Artillery fire should automatically commence, drawing in Biters by the truckload.
• I reinforce the walls and turret arrays as needed until the biters settle down/die.
• As they do, I rip open the secure wall and create a tunnel of walls on either side of the railway.
• Inside these walls a patterned blueprint of electric poles, turrets, and Roboports will extend out.
• I'll slowly roll the death train forward, building out it's track, eliminating biters I draw to me.
• Once I get far enough outside the base that I can barely fire back at my original wall with artillery, I bank left or right on the railway.
• I level the biters on either side of the new tunnel until I have a newly cleared neutral zone that links to a body of water (or doubles back to the wall eventually).
• With a new outer wall in place, I remotely tear down the old defenses and pack them up to become part of the next push forward.

I know it sounds tedious, but to me it sounds like a fun thing to try. It takes so long to clear substantial terrain with a Tank and then secure it with walls that I'm hoping this works and can become a useful paradigm. I'm also going to try Flamer Turrets for the first time. They look like they need a direct feed of oil/fuel and not just ammo - so I'm planning to barrel up a load of Light Oil and lay down little factories to unpack it and feed it directly to the turrets - or add a tanker car and use pumps to either push or pull the oil to turrets or back into the tanker as needed.

My whole base was designed, too, to not use Logistics bots at all as I really prefer the look of belts. The only place I'm using the 1000+ bots I made previously is the Science lab, where they flock to feed the labs as Science is unpacked from trains.

[The Meal]

I'm wary of laying down too much concrete and landfill as (IIRC) it blocks the absorption of pollution by the ground/water tiles.

That's not a thing. (edit: I had the wrong impression as the next few posts will correct — covered over tiles actually aborb slightly less pollution than natural tiles. My bad!) Trees and spawners absorb pollution. General "chunks" also absorb pollution (covered over or not).
https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution

Biters have really been hammering my walls on all sides due to pollution spillage, so my next agenda item is the train of doom and expansion. I've already tacked two Artillery cars onto my Logistics train and will try to build out a rolling platform of death later tonight. My plan, until it meets the enemy is...

I like doing this as well, but note that it can be a lot more dangerous than you expect. Depending on just how many spawners the artillery brings in at once, you may need a SIGNIFICANT bunker to repel everything.

Still, it's boatloads of fun.

[LordMortis]

That's not a thing.

???

That's not a thing. Trees and spawners absorb pollution. General "chunks" also absorb pollution (covered over or not).
https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution

I had paingod's same impression from the exact link you posted. Why would they add that path tiles don't absorb if the "chunk" underneath still does? I might have glossed over an in depth explanation. I do that disambiguates

[stessier]

I'm wary of laying down too much concrete and landfill as (IIRC) it blocks the absorption of pollution by the ground/water tiles.

That's not a thing. Trees and spawners absorb pollution. General "chunks" also absorb pollution (covered over or not).
https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution

From that link, there is the chart below. A chunk made out of all 0 items would absorb nothing.

Every chunk has a natural absorption rate per second which is determined by the sum of the pollution absorption of its floor tiles.

Following numbers are the pollution reduction for a single tile per second.

Code: Select all

Tile			Pollution per second
Grass 1-4			-0.0000075
Dirt 1-7, dry dirt		-0.0000066
Sand 1-3			-0.0000058
Red desert 0-3			-0.0000066
Water, green water, deep water, deep green water, shallow water, mud water	-0.000005
Path tiles (Stone bricks, concrete etc), landfill				0
Out of map									-0.00001
Special tiles (Lab tiles, tutorial grid)					0

Biters have really been hammering my walls on all sides due to pollution spillage, so my next agenda item is the train of doom and expansion. I've already tacked two Artillery cars onto my Logistics train and will try to build out a rolling platform of death later tonight. My plan, until it meets the enemy is...

I like doing this as well, but note that it can be a lot more dangerous than you expect. Depending on just how many spawners the artillery brings in at once, you may need a SIGNIFICANT bunker to repel everything.

Yeah, it depends on your settings as to what the max size of a swarm can be, but the default max quantity can really bring the pain.